“You’re full o’shite as ever, Dad,” said Jimmy with equal measures of contempt and affection.
A different cry sounded from around the road-bend: “Kukuya! Kukuya!” As soon as they heard it, the Cherumans picked up their hoes and moved away from the road, depopulating a sixty-four-foot-wide strip to either side of it. Presently a small party of travelers came into view: a black-skinned woman, naked from the waist up except for her gold jewelry, riding a white horse, and a few servants on foot.
“If that be a Nayar, then let’s go to where the Nayars live,” Danny said.
“What the hell d’you suppose we’ve been doing for the last week?”
“There’s more like her where we’re going?”
“Yes—they run the place. They are a warrior caste. It’s just like going to St. James’s and gawking at the Persons of Quality: lovely ladies, and men with swords—who don’t hesitate to use ’em.”
After the sun had gone down, Jack sent his escort back to re-join the luxurious Siege. They lay about in that camp for the rest of the night dozing. At daybreak they were startled awake by a shouting match between a Cheruman, standing before a slab of rock sixty-four feet from the city limits, and a Banyan standing on the parapet of the wall. The Cheruman upended a sack of money onto the slab: cowrie-shells, Persian bitter almonds, and a few black coppers. Then he withdrew. A minute later the Banyan came out, deposited a bundle of goods, plucked off a few shells, almonds, and coppers, and went back into the town. The Cheruman returned and collected the bundle and whatever change the Banyan had left behind.
“Seems a wee bit cumbersome,” Danny observed, watching incredulously.
“On the contrary, I deem it eminently practical,” said Enoch Root. “If I belonged to a small warrior elite, my greatest fear would be a peasant uprising—ambushes along the roads, and so on. If I had the right to kill any peasant who came within a bow-shot of me…”
“You could relax an’ enjoy the good life,” Jimmy said.
After provisioning themselves in the town they turned south and followed the coast deeper into Malabar. From time to time they would pass a criminal who had been impaled on a javelin and left to die by the road-side, which only confirmed the impression that they were in a well-ordered place now, and had not taken any undue risks in sending their escort home. The heat of the sun in this far southern place was murderous, but the farther they went the closer the came to the Laccadive Sea with its cool onshore breezes, and in many stretches the road was lined with Palmyra palms whose enormous leaves cast volumes of shade on the way below.
They knew they were close to the court of Queen Kottakkal when frail racks began to line the road, all a-drape with those same palm leaves, which had been put there to dry and whiten. The Queen’s scribes used them as paper. A lot of shouting could be heard up ahead.
“What’re they hollerin’ about?” Danny wondered.
“Maybe one of their ships just came back loaded to the gunwales with booty,” Jack said, “or maybe a crocodile is loose in the town square.”
The road opened up into the main street of a fair-sized port town consisting mostly of woven reed dwellings. There were occasional timber houses along the street, and these became more numerous and larger as they drew closer to the waterfront: the bank of a significant river that ran slowly and quietly through a deep-looking channel that broadened, a quarter of a mile downstream, to form an inlet of the Laccadive Sea. The town had doubtless stood here for æons but gave the impression of having just been set up in the midst of an ancient forest, as giant trees—teaks, mangoes, mahua, mahogany, coconut-palm, axle-wood, and one or two cathedral-sized banyan trees—stood between houses, and spread and merged overhead to create a second roof high above the palm frond thatchings that topped the buildings.
Young Nayar men were racing from house to house and tree-trunk to tree-trunk hollering at each other in extreme excitement. The travelers had only just come into view of the waterfront when a posse of Nayar boys burst out of a house and ran past them, completely ignoring them. Moments later those Nayars were pursued by a shower of arrows that came hissing down all around, some landing among the Shaftoes and lodging in the soft ground.
“Those black fookers are shoowatin’ at us!” exclaimed Jimmy, yanking out his pistol and cocking the hammer.
“Not just at us, Jimmy boy,” Jack said, in an ominously quiet voice.
All of the others turned to see Jack sprawled in his little two-wheeled carriage, both hands clutching his abdomen, where an arrow projected from his body at right angles. “It’s a damned shame,” he whispered. “Come all this way to die here and now…”
Jimmy was torn, like a man on the rack, between his desire to go and kill some black people, and the strictures of the Fifth Commandment. “Dad!” he cried, dismounting, and crossing over to the carriage in a couple of strides. He put his hand up to Jack’s face as if to give him a tender caress—then clamped his father’s jaw between thumb and fingers and wrenched his head this way and that, inspecting him. “You still bear the marks o’ the beatin’ we gayave ya—an’ to think you’ll carry ’em to yer grayave.”
“To me they’re like the sweet kisses I never had from the two of you—and never deserved—”
“Aw, Dad!” Jimmy cried, and planted one directly on Jack’s lips. Fortunately from Jack’s point of view it only lasted a few seconds—then Jimmy grunted, bit his father’s lip, and spun away from him, clutching his ribs.
Danny was looking down on them coolly from the back of his horse, holding a bow whose string was still quivering. “When you’re finished, tell me so I can go an’ throw up. Then we’ve a score to settle with those Nayars, or what e’er the fook you call ’em.”
Jimmy bent down stiffly and picked up the arrow that Danny had just loosed into his ribs. It had a blunt tip.
“Take two—you’ll be needing ’em,” Jack said, handing Jimmy the one that had bruised him in the stomach.
A couple of Nayars charged each other in the middle of the street nearby, and fell into a terrific duel with bamboo swords.
“I’m startin’ to like the looks o’ this town!” Jimmy said. “May we use firearms?”
“I do not think it would be considered sporting,” Jack said, as Danny shot a blunt arrow into the chest of a strapping Nayar who was just emerging from a doorway. A dozen arrows swarmed from the windows of the same dwelling and knocked Danny out of the saddle.
“Ye basetards!” Jimmy bellowed, and charged the doorway before the snipers could nock a second flight of arrows.
“Run along and play, boys,” Jack said—unnecessarily. He and Enoch slapped their bullocks’ reins and went into motion. Soon the street debouched into a sort of waterfront plaza hacked out of the mangroves. Diverse small river-boats and coastal craft were tied up along the quay, reminding Jack, in a very imprecise way, of Thames-side. Turning their heads they could look downstream to the inlet that served as Queen Kottakkal’s chief, and only, harbor. A dozen or so larger vessels rode at anchor there, and their appearance made Enoch chuckle. “Nowhere have I seen a more motley collection of pirate-vessels—not in Dunkirk, not even in Port Royal of Jamaica. Turkish galleots, Arab dhows, Flemish corvettes—is there anything they won’t use?”
“To carry guns and to sail fast are the only requirements,” Jack said. “The dhow, second from left, is the vessel she took from us.”
And then both men naturally turned their heads to gaze southwards across the river. The opposite bank was a stone bluff undercut by the current, so that it bulged out towards them slightly, then rose to a plateau some ten fathoms above their heads. This was not extraordinarily high, but it sufficed to command the river and the inlet with batteries of forty-eight pounders and mortars that could be seen, here and there, protruding from embrasures at the corners of Queen Kottakkal’s palace wall. It was difficult to make out where the natural cliff left off and the built wall began, for both were concealed deep behind a mat of interwoven vines, some as
thick as tree-trunks, that had grown outwards to a depth of yards. This hanging jungle was home to a whole nation of adventurous monkeys with prehensile tails. The vines that grew on the Queen’s fortifications were of diverse species, but all of them seemed to be flowering. These were not roses or carnations but ripe dripping fleshy organs of sweet light, big as cabbages, grown in shapes that Euclid never dreamed off, organized in clusters, networks, and hierarchies. At the moment all were facing into the sun, so that the jungle-wall blazed with shocking color. It looked as if some fabulously wealthy pirate-nation had laid siege to the place and bombarded it with giant rubies, citrines, pearls, opals, lumps of coral, and agates, which had lodged in the cliff and been left there. It hummed and teemed with the energy of a million bees and a thousand hummingbirds that had been drawn to the place from all over the South Seas by the cataract of narcotic fragrance that came out of it. Compared to this, the mossy domes of the palace above and the blunt muzzles of its guns, were as dim as old paint.
Getting up there, if they had not been invited, would have been a short, fatal adventure. As it was, Jack and Enoch were conveyed across the river without losing any limbs to crocodiles, and ascended to the palace without running afoul of any trap-doors or poison-dart barrages. They followed a series of stairways—some external, winding up the stone cliff-face among the vines, and some internal, cut through the stone. Finally they emerged into a small courtyard surrounded by walls with many arrow-slits: a killing-ground for invaders. But a door was opened and so they entered into the palace.
Very little of Queen Kottakkal’s palace was really indoors: It was a complex of gardens, terraces, temple-courts, and plazas divided one from the next by a sparse net-work of roofed galleries, with apartments situated here and there.
“Normally it is teeming with Nayars,” Jack offered, “especially when so many pirate-ships are in the harbor. But they are all down in the town, enjoying the mock-battle.”
He led Enoch on a short excursion down a gallery and across agarden to the very door of a large stone dwelling with diverse balconies and windows. But he drew up short when he noticed a sheathed sword leaning against the door-post. Jack shushed Enoch with a finger to his lips, and did not speak until they had put a hundred paces behind them.
“It was a good enough sword,” Enoch said, “some sort of Persian shamsir, to judge from its extreme curvature and slender blade. But methinks you show it more respect than is warranted…”
“These Malabar women are as free with men, as Charles II himself was with women,” Jack explained. “In these parts, a man can never tell which children are his. Or to put it another way, every man knows his mother but hasn’t the faintest idea who his father might be. Consequently, all property passes down the female line.”
“Including the crown?”
“Including the crown. One peculiarity of this arrangement is that a man, going in to pay a call on a lady, never knows what other man he might discover in her bed. To prevent awkward situations, a gallant therefore leaves his weapon leaning against the door-post when he enters—as a sign to all who pass by that the lady’s attentions are spoken for.”
“So the Queen is passing some time with a Persian? Odd, that.”
“The weapon is Persian. Dappa—our linguist—bought it in Mocha when we passed through there years ago. Of all of us, he is the only one who has made much headway in learning the Malabar language.”
“He is putting it to good use!”
“He has already put it to good use by convincing the Queen that he and the others have a higher calling than to be slaves.”
And with that Jack opened the door to another, much smaller apartment, and led Enoch through to a terrace at the back that looked out over the harbor. European-style tables and chairs had been brought out here. Two men were working over messes of palm-leaves covered with writing, figures, maps, and diagrams: Monsieur Arlanc and Moseh de la Cruz.
They were only mildly surprised to see Jack. Enoch Root required a bit of explanation—but once Jack adumbrated that the stranger had something to do with cannons, the others welcomed him. Moseh, Jack, and Monsieur Arlanc fell quickly into a detailed conversation about the ship. They were speaking Sabir, which was the only tongue they all shared. Enoch could not perfectly follow it. He drifted away to gaze out over the Laccadive Sea, and then turned his attention to some ink drawings that had been pegged to the wall.
“Is this art Japanese?” he inquired, breaking in abruptly.
“Yes—or at least, the fellow who made it is,” Jack said. “We were just talking about him. Let’s go and introduce you to Father Gabriel Goto of the Society of Jesus.”
I was driven out of my native country by a dreadful sound that was in mine ears, to wit, that unavoidable destruction did attend me, if I abode in that place where I was.
—JOHN BUNYAN,
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Gabriel Goto had politely declined to work as a pirate and so Queen Kottakkal had put him to work as a gardener. Some suspected that he did not work very hard, for compared to most of the palace—which was continually in danger of being overrun and conquered by its vegetation—Gabriel Goto’s plot was a desert. He’d been put in charge of a courtyard in the landward corner of the palace grounds that was perpetually shaded by tall trees and by an adjacent stone watch-tower, yet sorely exposed to storm-winds, and poorly drained. It had defeated many a gardener. Gabriel Goto settled the matter by growing nothing there, except for moss, and the odd stand of bamboo. Most of the “garden” consisted of stones, raked gravel, and a pond sporting a brace of bloated, mottled carp. Every so often the Jesuit would drag a rake across the gravel or throw some food at the fish, but most of the work involved in the upkeep was mental in nature, and could not be accomplished unless his mind was clear. Clearing his mind was an extraordinarily demanding project requiring him to sit crosslegged on a wooden patio for hours at a time, dipping a brush into ink and drawing pictures on palm leaves. At any rate, this corner of the palace no longer bred mosquitoes and poisonous frogs as it had formerly been infamous for doing, and so the Queen left him alone.
The results of Gabriel Goto’s artistic labors were neatly stacked, and in some cases baled, almost to the ceiling of the apartment behind his patio. More recent work had been hung from lines to dry in the breeze.
“It is the same landscapes over and over,” Enoch Root observed, browsing his way down a clothes-line of rugged and none-too-cheerful-looking scenes: mostly hills and cliffs plunging into waters speckled with outlandish square-sailed vessels.
“The work, as a whole, is called One Hundred and Seven Views of the Passage to Niigata,” said Moseh de la Cruz helpfully.
“This is my favorite: Breakers on the Reef Before Katsumoto,” said Monsieur Arlanc—delighted to have someone to speak full-dress French to. “So much is suggested by so little—it is a humbling contrast with our Barock style.”
“Bor-ing! Give me Korean Pirate Attack in the Straits of Tsushima any day!” Jack put in.
“That is fine if you like vulgar sword-play, but I believe his finest work is in the Wrecks: Chinese Junk Aground in Shifting Sands, and Skeleton of a Fishing-Boat Caught in Tree Branches being two notable examples.”
“Are all of his pictures about Hazards to Navigation?” asked Enoch Root.
“Have you ever seen a nautical picture that wasn’t?” Jack demanded.
“Over here, you can see the Massacre of Hara triptych,” said Moseh.
“Let’s go find the samurai,” Jack said. And they did, passing in a few steps through the wee house he’d fabricated out of sticks and paper—or, to be precise, palm leaves. His swords—a long two-hander and a shorter cutlass—rested one above the other in a little wooden stand. Jack went over and peered at the longer of the two. It had come from the collection of an Algerian corsair-captain, but according to Gabriel Goto it had unquestionably been forged in Japan at least a hundred years ago. And indeed the shape of its blade, the style of the han
dle, and the carving of the guard were unlike anything else Jack had ever seen, which argued in favor of its being from what by all accounts was the queerest country on the face of the earth. But the actual steel of the blade was (as Jack had noted, and remarked on, in Cairo years before) marked with the same swirling pattern shared by every other watered-steel blade, be it a Janissary-sword forged in Damascus, a shamsir from the forge of Tamerlane in Samarkand, or a kitar from the wootz-vale.
Having confirmed this memory to his own satisfaction, Jack straightened up and turned around and nearly butted heads with Enoch Root, who was just in the act of noticing the same thing. To his great satisfaction Jack saw amazement on the alchemist’s face, followed by a few moments of what looked almost like fear, as he came aware of what it might mean.
“Let’s hear what the artist has to say for himself,” said Jack, and slid a translucent screen aside to reveal the flinty garden, and Gabriel Goto sitting with his back to them, holding a brush with an ink-drop poised on its sharp tip.
GABRIEL GOTO’S STORY
[AS NARRATED IN CLERICAL LATIN TO ENOCH ROOT]
“I have never seen Japan. I know it only from pictures my father drew, of which these are but miserable plagiarisms.
“From the others you have heard stories that are as complicated as a Barock church or Ottoman mosque. But the Japanese way is to be simple, like this garden, so I will tell my tale with as few brush-strokes as possible. Even so it will be too many.
“Those who have ruled Japan, be they monks, emperors, or shoguns, have always depended upon local knights, each of whom is responsible for looking after some particular piece of land—seeing to it that this land produces well and that the people who work it are orderly and content. Those knights are called Samurai, and as with the knights of Christendom, it is their responsibility to keep arms and to bear them in the service of their lord when called upon. My family have been Samurai for as long as we choose to remember. The lands for which we were responsible were of little account, being in a high cold stony place, and we were held in no special regard by others of our class.
The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World Page 194
